AA Southern League home run hitter Scott Schebler and major league 3rd baseman Jake Lamb have something in common

Yesterday Scott Schebler hit his 25th home run which leads the Southern League thanks to Kris Bryant being promoted to AAA many weeks ago. Schebler is still going relatively unnoticed among the prospect intelligentsia, but the rotisserie world is taking notice. Jesse Siegel the Rotowire minor league columnist commented on Schebler this weekend during his Upgrade spot:

Scott Schebler, OF, LAD – Schebler has been on fire lately for Double-A Chattanooga. The 23-year-old outfielder is hitting .324 with six home runs, 12 RBI and one steal over his last 10 games for the Lookouts. That brings his overall numbers to .282/.365/.557 with 24 home runs, 65 RBI and 10 steals through 116 games. The Dodgers still have a huge glut of outfielders at the big-league level, as evidenced by the fact that stud prospect Joc Pederson has remained at Triple-A for the entire season despite fantastic statistics. Schebler wasn’t making it to the majors this season anyway, though, and perhaps this offseason the Dodgers will unload the likes of Andre Ethier, Carl Crawford and even Matt Kemp. With the outfield talent coming through the minors, Los Angeles might be able to afford such a cost-cutting move without any loss of production.

I thought I’d check in on Scott via Andrew Grant’s excellent minor league central site and use his leaderboards to do some research. I knew Schebler lead the Southern League in home runs, but I wanted to see how he stacked up age wise against his competition. One thing stood out for me. Jake Lamb and Scott Schebler are the exact same baseball age at 23. 67. Jake Lamb was promoted two weeks ago to be the Diamondbacks starting 3rd baseman. Lamb had the highest wOBA in the Southern League at .433, but his BABIP was sitting at .389. Schebler has an wOBA of .403 but with a more reasonable BABIP of only .304. With an ISO of .270 a full 40 points higher than Lamb, Schebler would seem to be the better hitting prospect.

So I’ll be watching to see how Jake Lamb does against major league pitching, and maybe just maybe, the prospect intelligentsia should start taking Schebler a little more seriously.